The Hobbit (spoilers!)

Let me start by saying that I was really looking forward to this. I'm quite a big Tolkien fan; I've read many of his works, I have all the Lord of the Rings films (and have watched them many times), and I even play the Games Workshop strategy game, having recently added some Dol Amroth heavy horse to my Gondorian army. So...yeah, I was looking forward to this, and I wanted so much for it to be good.

Sadly, it wasn't. It was unnecessarily long, and a little dull. Some of it was plain silly - I know, I know, it was based on a child's book. But still, they could have made a bit more of an effort. The problem wasn't that some of the scenes were a little tongue-in-cheek (I really didn't mind the dwarves' washing up part because that was in the spirit of the book), but some of it was just downright unbelievable. The rabbit sled, for example...okay, special rabbits, I'm getting that, but can they really outrun wargs, while pulling a sled, with a grown adult male, across all kinds of rough ground without any noticeable change in velocity?

Bits I liked: the start was really good. The intro-story scenes with Erebor were awesome. The Bag End bit was well done and true to the book. The Gollum bit was spot on, and couldn't have been done better if Tolkien himself had directed it (the way Gollum loses the ring in the first place was a nice touch).

Bits I didn't like: the action scenes. They were too long, and too unbelievable, to the point where I no longer felt that the characters were in any real danger. The trees, the storm giants (was that in the book btw? I don't remember it but it has been a VERY long time since I read that particular story), the escape from Goblin Town...all a bit too unbelievable to be entertaining, and most of them seemed to be in the film merely for the "wow!" factor, which doesn't impress me much. I usually love fantasy action scenes, but these ones had me thinking "when will this end so that we can move on with the story?"

Also, since when do the elves have horse archers? Since when can orcs travel in daylight? Since when is felling a tree as easy as throwing a warg at it? And since when does Gandalf abandon the company following an argument with Thorin, because he has "had enough of dwarves for one day"? That doesn't sound like his character at all.

So, in summary: I was disappointed. It had its moments, but overall, it was too long, too full of silliness. It's still worth watching, especially if you're a Tolkien fan (and not too much of a purist), but don't expect anything special.

It felt like it was padded within an inch of its life. I have to agree with whoever said, "the thinner Peter Jackson gets, the more bloated his movies become."

I wish my username was Cunnilingus. Or something GWAR-ish.

Can't you request a username change?

Or, y'know, start another account?

I've never read the book, so my criticisms are purely about the film. The first, most minor one is that some of the dwarves were very cartoony looking while others, especially Thorin, were more "real". There's probably something to be said that the Dwarf leader/hero has to be conventially attractive but I'll leave that for other people to dissect.

The second, more important one is that I don't believe Bilbo's change of heart, when he decides to go on this perilous adventure that he's been resisting since Gandalf showed up in the Shire. It's all very well for Gandalf to say "oh you've changed" and talk about Bilbo's legendary ancestor, but all we've seen of Bilbo is that he's this houseproud homebody who is extremely put out at having his space invaded by all these dwarves. Why not take a few minutes for a flashback scene, and show young Bilbo "adventuring" to the edge of the Shire only for his frantic parents to hustle him back home and scold him for straying? Have his Baggins relatives telling him that Bagginses don't leave the Shire, why risk tramping around the big dangerous world when you can read about it in books, etc. Then a voiceover by old Bilbo saying that as he grew older he agreed with his relatives and was quite content to stay in the Shire all his life and never thought about adventuring...until one day Gandalf showed up. That's better storytelling, especially in a visual medium, especially one where you're held to a running time and can't take pages and pages to establish backstory. Jackson and/or his scriptwriters have forgotten about "Show, don't tell".

To be fair I think the book conveys the whole "fine Ill go on your fucking adventure whatchamacallit fuck off Gandalf stop bothering me" pretty well but you haven't read the book

I haven't seen the movie yet. Waiting for it to hit the dollar movie while possibly seeing Les Mis instead, schedule permitting.

Disco Stu wrote:

To be fair I think the book conveys the whole "fine Ill go on your fucking adventure whatchamacallit fuck off Gandalf stop bothering me" pretty well but you haven't read the book

I'm sure the book portrays exactly what Bilbo is feeling and why he changes his mind, because that's the beauty of the written medium - we can be privy to a character's innermost private thoughts and emotions. But in a movie we need to hear Bilbo say "fine fine fine, whatever it takes to get these bloody dwarves out of my house". Or at least see him make a resigned yet angry face. Not only don't we see that, that's not the reason we're given for Bilbo going - Gandalf is all "your ancestor was so tall he could ride a horse and knocked some guy's block off in a great war" and "when you were little you always wanted to go on adventures". If the movie reason Bilbo goes is that his former sense of adventure has been rekindled, then we need to see that he once had a sense of adventure. It's lazy of the filmmakers to assume everyone who goes to see the movie has read the book and can just fill in the background for themselves.

Granted it's been a loooong ass time since I read the book, but... no. The beauty of the written medium never really comes into it. Which is odd for someone like Tolkien who so thoroughly enpurpled his proseness at every turn. Bilbo is forced to deal with a shitload of sudden guests and is then basically browbeaten into going on an epic quest with them because it's less socially awkward than saying FUCK YOU GET OUT OF MY HOUSE YOU BEARDED WEIRDOS. YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE MOTORCYCLES, I'M NOT SCARED OF YOU.

IIRC, the book deals with this by saying something like "...and suddenly something awoke within Bilbo..." who then goes on to agree. There really isn't much to go on.

The idea I'm currently going with is that Gandalf somehow knew he would say yes, otherwise he wouldn't have dragged a bunch of dwarves half way across the world and sent them to a random house in a random country that nobody else knew existed if there was a chance of him saying "No, not going to happen. Sorry I wasted your time." In the book, I always saw Gandalf as this mysterious manipulator-of-fate type character, but the film didn't really get that across.

I agree that some of the dwarves looked cartooney, but that was in the spirit of the book, which is why I decided to let that one slide.

Cunovendus wrote:

I agree that some of the dwarves looked cartooney

I don't mind the cartoony part so much, it's just that some of them look really cartoony and some of them not only don't look cartoony, they don't even have dwarf-like features. Out of context, Thorin looks like he belongs to one of the races of Men.

On Bilbo's change of heart - again, I'm not talking about the book. Jackson and his writers made the decision that this is why he ultimately sets off on this perilous adventure, and then proceed to tell us instead of show us. That's bad movie-making.

I haven't read the book in a long while, but from what I can remember, the movie has held up to it rather well. I even liked the additional subplots of Radagast (Sylvester McCoy! I just about nerd-gasmed at that!) and Azok the Defiler since they worked to Gandalf and Thorin's characters respectively. You don't learn a great deal much about Thorin in the book, and which is why I really enjoyed this inclusion. It gives Thorin something else to struggle with other than just heading to the Lonely Mountain. It also builds up a great climactic showdown in the third movie.
OK, yeah, it was long and wasn't as well-paced as the Lord of the Rings movies, but if Peter Jackson can do anything right, it's knowing how to treat the fans. I myself found it surpassed what I expected of it.

Oh of course, the whole "telling, not showing" thing is obvious, but frankly, I didn't really care. It was standard exposition/backstory fare, which it didn't need to be shown, because let's face it, the movie was long enough. But like Wulf said previously, if there was a flashback to young Bilbo being dragged home by his parents, that would certainly have made for good character development.

On the whole, I enjoyed this movie. There felt like a balance of action, tension, cartoony slapstick (which I expected nothing less from the Dwarves), and good serious drama.

Some of the additions made to the movie are attempts to bring the dwarves to the forefront of the story. Dwarves, as Tolkien wrote then in The Hobbit, are nothing but a bunch of repellent Jewish stereotypes. They're gold hoarders, most of their exploits are motivated by greed, they're selfish, and, most importantly, not very brave. Because of that, they are deliberately kept out of the big exploits, which are done by humans, elves, Gandalf, Bilbo, just about anyone but dwarves, really. The one really brave dwarf (Thorin) fails to complete his vengeance and dies.

After WWII, Tolkien had to backpedal away that shit because anti-Semitism went out of fashion. The entire personality of Gimli is constructed to erase the stereotypical negative traits of the Hobbit dwarves, and he added a bunch of explanation in LOTR to whitewash his previous characterization. Dwarven greed? Fantastic racism, man, also the rings made them do it. Lack of heroic resolve? Here, let me make Gimli super loyal and fierce, and also give the dwarves a battle cry cribbed from the Gurkhas. And so on.

So, they let Azog live and gave him a bigger part so Thorin has a real enemy to play off of, also bringing some elements from later Tolkien works and the backstory to give their company a leg to stand on.

TheIan wrote:

I haven't read the book in a long while, but from what I can remember, the movie has held up to it rather well. I even liked the additional subplots of Radagast (Sylvester McCoy! I just about nerd-gasmed at that!) and Azok the Defiler since they worked to Gandalf and Thorin's characters respectively. You don't learn a great deal much about Thorin in the book, and which is why I really enjoyed this inclusion. It gives Thorin something else to struggle with other than just heading to the Lonely Mountain. It also builds up a great climactic showdown in the third movie.

In the original, Azog died in the backstory (to be specific, during the War of Orcs and Dwarves), and his son Bolg showed up to trigger the final battle. Since we've already seen photos of Conan Stevens as Bolg, I think they'll keep him for the final movie and kill Azog before that.

Exodia's Right Leg wrote:

Some of the additions made to the movie are attempts to bring the dwarves to the forefront of the story. Dwarves, as Tolkien wrote then in The Hobbit, are nothing but a bunch of repellent Jewish stereotypes. They're gold hoarders, most of their exploits are motivated by greed, they're selfish, and, most importantly, not very brave.

What, are you saying that Jews are like that??

I think changing something because it plays off a negative stereotype and might offend someone simply helps to reinforce that stereotype. I mean, if somebody said "no you can't have a race that never gets involved in wars and just hides money in their banks, that might offend the Swiss!", that would offend me far more than having a race that never fights in battles and hides money in their accounts, who definitely aren't Swiss.

That said, I'm glad he did that, because I prefer the dwarves as Danish Huscarl/Scottish Clansman type warriors who are stout, brave and drink a lot while bragging about their exploits in battle - although that could be because I grew up with dwarves being that way so I'm used to that image of the dwarf.

Anyway, I didn't have a problem with that part of it. I quite liked them bringing in that backstory, and having Azgog as a main antagonist and a hook for Thorin. I liked the Erebor bit at the start. I even liked them bringing in the story of the Necromancer. I just found many of the action scenes boring, and if a film is going to include a lot of action scenes then they need to be entertaining. It's as if they spent all of their money on visual effects, and didn't have any left over for fight coreographers and stunt coordinators. But then, I suppose that's the problem with too much blue-screen filming. There's only so much an actor can do when he has nothing but a blue screen to act with (and not the BSoD - at least a decent actor could do something with that!! ).

Also, I liked Thorin's character, I found him quite believable, but I agree that he looked too human. They could have bulked him out a bit with prosthetics. The other dwarves didn't really stand out. But I suppose that's as much Tolkien's fault as it is the actors and directors.

Cyberwulf wrote:

On Bilbo's change of heart - again, I'm not talking about the book. Jackson and his writers made the decision that this is why he ultimately sets off on this perilous adventure, and then proceed to tell us instead of show us. That's bad movie-making.

I have to disagree here; I think they did a great job of showing Bilbo's change of heart. You saw how flustered and upset he was about the mess the dwarves were making during their visit, yes? Check out the expression on his face when he realizes that not only is nothing broken, but everything has been cleaned and put in its proper place before they left. There was that lingering shot of Bilbo standing alone in his empty and very quiet house; you could essentially see that he was considering Gandalf's criticism about his having changed 'for the worse' as he aged (i.e. no longer willing to take risks for things like adventures). And lest we forget his demeanor during the Misty Mountains dirge.

Some things don't really require a monologue.

Aggie wrote:

You saw how flustered and upset he was about the mess the dwarves were making during their visit, yes? Check out the expression on his face when he realizes that not only is nothing broken, but everything has been cleaned and put in its proper place before they left.

They didn't wreck his house, so he's suddenly willing to sign an incineration waiver?

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There was that lingering shot of Bilbo standing alone in his empty and very quiet house; you could essentially see that he was considering Gandalf's criticism about his having changed 'for the worse' as he aged (i.e. no longer willing to take risks for things like adventures).

But we never see him as someone who ever took risks for adventures. Or as someone who ever had any interest in adventures.

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Some things don't really require a monologue.

But we got a monologue, a "you've changed bro, you used to be cool" monologue from Gandalf. That's all we get. That's the problem.

Two more criticisms occurred to me:

1) The "Lord of the Rings" foreshadowing seemed a bit tacked on. I don't mean the bit at the beginning with Elijah Wood, I know that's there for stupid people who won't recognise Bilbo and Gandalf and thus won't realise that this is the prequel. I mean the bit with Gandalf, Galadriel, Saruman and Elrond sitting around talking ominously about "the enemy". However, for all I know that's in the book, so it's not a big deal.

2) The scenes with Radagast zoning out on the pipeweed and Saruman writing him off as a mushroom head felt like they were shoehorned in for the 420 SMOKE WEED EVERYDAY crowd. There's no need to spell it out, PeeJay. Let us sit in the cinema and make our own shroom jokes.

Cyberwulf wrote:

I mean the bit with Gandalf, Galadriel, Saruman and Elrond sitting around talking ominously about "the enemy". However, for all I know that's in the book, so it's not a big deal.

That is in a story from Unfinished Tales, I think. A retelling of the Hobbit from Gandalf's point of view. It is not in The Hobbit proper. So, it is kind of tacked on but Tolkien sort of did the same thing. I mean, when he first wrote the book it was not meant to connect to LotR, so some of that feeling of tacked on forshadowing is coming from the source material.

My mom suggested that introducing this idea of 'the enemy' 'slowly gaining power' was meant to explain the fact that Biblo puts on the ring all the time with little consequence in The Hobbit and then in LotR all of a sudden putting the ring on is a huge deal. Like, the ring is acting less like an object of doom and more like an enchanted tricket atm because Sauron is still weak. I suppose that is already sort of implied by the Nazgul showing up and everyone being all, like, omg Nazgul wtf, but perhaps they wanted to give us a reminder? I dunno, I am not very good at analyzing movies.

Exodia's Right Leg wrote:

Some of the additions made to the movie are attempts to bring the dwarves to the forefront of the story. Dwarves, as Tolkien wrote then in The Hobbit, are nothing but a bunch of repellent Jewish stereotypes. They're gold hoarders, most of their exploits are motivated by greed, they're selfish, and, most importantly, not very brave. Because of that, they are deliberately kept out of the big exploits, which are done by humans, elves, Gandalf, Bilbo, just about anyone but dwarves, really. The one really brave dwarf (Thorin) fails to complete his vengeance and dies.

You stretch any more to make this point, you risk herniating yourself. Yes, the traditional Jewish stereotype is mainly one of greed and money-hoarding, and yes, superficially, the Dwarves in Tolkien share this trait. Of course, that's pretty much where the commonalities end, unless you know a lot of Jewish people who live under mountains, delve for gold, jewels and precious metals and then make everything from jewelry to armor out of those materials. The greed exhibited by the Dwarves in Tolkien is less desire for spendable, material wealth, and more for finely crafted things. Their reputation in Middle-Earth is far more one of selfish craftspeople than it is of greedy moneylenders; it's the latter of those two which hits closer to the mark of the Jewish stereotype.

Also, you're oversimplifying, but more on that in a second.

Exodia's Right Leg wrote:

After WWII, Tolkien had to backpedal away that shit because anti-Semitism went out of fashion. The entire personality of Gimli is constructed to erase the stereotypical negative traits of the Hobbit dwarves, and he added a bunch of explanation in LOTR to whitewash his previous characterization. Dwarven greed? Fantastic racism, man, also the rings made them do it. Lack of heroic resolve? Here, let me make Gimli super loyal and fierce, and also give the dwarves a battle cry cribbed from the Gurkhas. And so on.

Tolkien didn't backpedal away from a damned thing. Gimli seems different because we get a better look at his personality. He is the lone Dwarf, in a fellowship of nine adventurers, in a story that spans three volumes. As opposed to any given Dwarf in The Hobbit, who is one of thirteen, and exists in a single book with is roughly less than one third the length of The Lord of the Rings

Gimli's actions are in fact entirely in keeping with Tolkien's original depiction of Dwarves, dating back to their appearance in The Silmarillion. Now, I know that book is boring as shit to some people, so any ignorance regarding the events related between its covers can be forgiven (I suppose ), but the fact of the matter is that Tolkien was working on the tales in that book for much of his life, beginning somewhere during his time in World War I if not before. This pre-dates both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. And what do the Dwarves look like in The Simlarillion, you may well ask? Well, they're tough both physically and mentally, ferociously loyal to their kings and their people, and the word "surrender" does not appear to be in their vocabulary, particularly when their backs are to the wall, their anger is up, or both. Their main vice is that they are largely uninterested in the affairs of the wider world and would prefer to keep to themselves and their mining. Well, that and their quick tempers and unfortunate proclivity for feeling insulted, affronted and generally aggrieved on the slightest pretext.

The Dwarves in The Hobbit seem less brave because of their situation. They are a troop of 13, some fighters, some not, traveling across a lot of hostile territory to try to retake their home from the dragon that decimated their people and drove them out, all in the belief (rightly or wrongly) that they can count on no aid from anywhere save perhaps from Gandalf, and what one wizard might do against a dragon seems questionable at best. So if they seem a little afraid, and less inclined to give battle where retreat seems to offer far greater odds for survival (which is to say, any odds at all), that seems to me to be more a matter of pragmatism rather than cowardice.

Any other discepancies between The Hobbit's Dwarves and those in Tolkien's other Middle-Earth-related works are likely due to the fact that when he was writing The Hobbit, he initially had no intentions to connect it to the mythology he was building. That only happened later, when he was trying to write the requested sequel to The Hobbit, and said sequel kept tying itself back to his mythology.

Reepicheep-chan wrote:

My mom suggested that introducing this idea of 'the enemy' 'slowly gaining power' was meant to explain the fact that Biblo puts on the ring all the time with little consequence in The Hobbit and then in LotR all of a sudden putting the ring on is a huge deal. Like, the ring is acting less like an object of doom and more like an enchanted tricket atm because Sauron is still weak.

I did often wonder at this; in The Hobbit, Bilbo puts the ring on all the time and it's like "yeah, I'm invisible!", then suddenly, Frodo puts it on in the Prancing Pony and it's "Woah! Evil psychadelic visuals, man! (plus these wraith guys can now see you)". Gradually growing power, plus a timescale that isn't really made clear in the film, would probably account for this.

There's also the matter of proximity. When Bilbo gets the ring home, and is constantly using it to avoid confrontation with the Sackvilles, he's quite far from Mordor, so while the dark lord's power is growing, he's not quite all there yet, hence the whole torturing Gollum scene. Once they start to close in on his position, putting on the ring makes him show up more, so we have the whole "Oh my god! Evilness!" thing.

This is probably the best explanation that I can think of, so I think I'll go with this.

Although this doesn't quite explain how, when Sam puts the ring on, the Dark Lord doesn't immediately pinpoint his location and go "Woah! That's, like, totally my ring over there on that fat hobbit!" - perhaps the range of Sauron himself is limited to just Barad Dur and Mount Doom, and he can't see ring bearers on the other side of Mordor...in absence of a better theory, I think I'll go with that for now.

Cunovendus wrote:

Although this doesn't quite explain how, when Sam puts the ring on

Does Sam put the ring on? IIRC, he carries it for a while for Frodo but I don't think he puts it on in the movies.

Also, since I seem to have listed all my criticisms with the movie, I'll throw in what I liked, for balance:

1) The more light-hearted touches, like the goblin king* saying "Oh, that'll do it" right before he died, and the dwarves taking exception to Bilbo saying they were riddled with parasites and then suddenly realising what he was trying to do and insisting they each had the most worms.

2) The dwarves themselves were great. They came across as a blend of Vikings and Celts, and as having a culture quite distinct not only from Elves and Hobbits but also the various races of Men. I also really liked that some of them were the kind of people who wipe their dirty boots on furniture and others were the kind of people who say "excuse me" and "where shall I put my plate" and "oh try some vegetables, you might like them". Almost as if they were individuals and not ciphers/stereotypes of an entire culture. I loved that they had a contract for the quest. Elrond didn't have one of them, did he? Frodo could've sued for emotional distress.

3) Thranduil on a huge stag. It really set him up as King of the Forest.

4) It didn't drag. The time flew and it left me wanting to see the next installment.



*okay, who saw the goblin king and didn't immediately think of Celebrian?

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3) Thranduil on a huge stag. It really set him up as King of the Forest.

BUUUUTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT THRANDUIL WAS NEVERRRRRRR ON A STAAAAG IN THE BOOOOOOOOOOK! THE EEELLLLLLLLVVVVEEESSSS NEVER HAD HORSE ARCHERRRRRRRS! NEVER EVER! IT SUCKS IT SUCKS AND IT SUCKS! GKLAHGLKAHGE:OIEHO:TIHHW:I

Cyberwulf wrote:

Does Sam put the ring on? IIRC, he carries it for a while for Frodo but I don't think he puts it on in the movies.

In the film he doesn't, but in the book he does. It's how he manages to become an amazing warrior for that bit where he slaughters a bunch of orcs in that watchtower. Actually I think that's one part that the film handled better than the book, because I can't think of a suitable reason for why Sauron didn't see him when he put the ring on and walked right into that watchtower killing a bunch of orcs.

Cunovendus wrote:

Although this doesn't quite explain how, when Sam puts the ring on, the Dark Lord doesn't immediately pinpoint his location and go "Woah! That's, like, totally my ring over there on that fat hobbit!"

Sauron was focused on the other side of the mountains, you know, the side with the huge armies, the city full of people that he hates, and Gandalf.

Plus, all the other heroes were doing their damned best to bring all the attention to themselves. They made Sauron believe they had brought the Ring to Gondor and Aragorn was going to use it. Sauron only noticed the ruse in the last moment, when Frodo claimed the ring for himself inside the volcano.

Exodia's Right Leg wrote:

Cunovendus wrote:

Although this doesn't quite explain how, when Sam puts the ring on, the Dark Lord doesn't immediately pinpoint his location and go "Woah! That's, like, totally my ring over there on that fat hobbit!"

Sauron was focused on the other side of the mountains, you know, the side with the huge armies, the city full of people that he hates, and Gandalf.

Plus, all the other heroes were doing their damned best to bring all the attention to themselves. They made Sauron believe they had brought the Ring to Gondor and Aragorn was going to use it. Sauron only noticed the ruse in the last moment, when Frodo claimed the ring for himself inside the volcano.

Because Frodo put the Ring on. There's no excuse for Sauron to have known it then, with Aragorn and Friends tearing down his front door, but to have not known it when Sam put it on two hours earlier.